


Lady Divine

by story_monger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Experimental Style, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2612036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, Mary dear, it really was heartbreaking," Patty says. "Both of them dead. And the worst part, if you’re to believe the reports, is all the blood. It wasn’t a home accident, Mary, those two were murdered by a psycho or something.”</p><p>“That’s awful,” Mary admits.</p><p> </p><p>Mary finally has the life she wanted. A loving husband, a son, and a second child on the way. The last thing she needs is anything to do with the supernatural. Then a series of mysterious deaths occur too close for comfort, and Mary starts to realize that her past isn't as far behind her as she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [elwarre](http://elwarre.livejournal.com) for reading over this!
> 
> [Inspo Tag](http://story-monger.tumblr.com/tagged/lady-divine)
> 
> [Playlist](http://8tracks.com/story_monger/lady-divine)

 

 

> _Hail Mary_
> 
> _Full of Grace_
> 
> _The Lord is with Thee_  

Mary doesn’t keep up with the news.

“Are you kidding?” she asks Patty. “I can’t remember the last time I read a newspaper.”

They stand at the end of Patty’s driveway, where Mary and Dean’s walk home from the preschool and Patty’s venture to retrieve her mail crossed paths. Patty laughs, a high, tinkling sound.

“No you’re right,” she admits. “It’s just that the TV and radio stations both have been covering it, and I guess I assumed…but it’s really the most horrible thing you’ve heard.”

Mary feels a tug on her coat and looks down to find two bleary eyes beneath tousled hair. She scoops Dean up, and he whines something indiscernible before he buries his face into her shoulder. Naptime has arrived.

“The most _horrible_ thing,” Patty repeats, crossing her arms against the late-November chill, white envelopes sticking out from behind her arm. “There’s a young couple a few streets away,” she says. “Just moved in, oh, two or three weeks ago. Well, apparently neither showed up to work for a few days,”—Mary’s heart sinks—“and this morning a policeman was sent to check things out. Oh, Mary dear, it really was heartbreaking. Both of them dead. And the worst part, if you’re to believe the reports, is all the _blood_. It wasn’t a home accident, Mary, those two were murdered by a _psycho_ or something.”

“That’s awful,” Mary admits.

“I’m talking to James tonight soon as he gets home,” Patty continues. “Getting him to put padlocks on all the doors. _Tonight_ , mind you, we don’t need to take any chances with whoever did _that_ running around the area. It makes you wonder what things have come to.”

Mary might have believed this if Patty didn’t look so morbidly delighted by the whole thing. Mary can’t blame her. Lawrence, Kansas is a relatively tame town, and people have to take their excitement where they can find it.

“You should have John do the same,” Patty tells her, gesturing with her handful of envelopes. “Especially with a little one and you in your condition.”

“I’ll mention it to him,” Mary assures her.

She bids Patty a good afternoon, promises to return the casserole dish she’d borrowed for the last neighborhood get-together, and hustles a whining Dean into the house.

After Dean is put to bed, Mary lingers in the hall outside his bedroom, one hand smoothing thoughtfully across the rising swell of her belly. Then she takes a few steps down the hall to where an old table that used to belong to her mother holds a few framed photographs and a bowl of potpourri. She slides a hand beneath the table, clicks a panel, and pulls out a drawer that had not been noticeable a moment before. She lets her fingers drag over a silver knife and a tiny box with a devil trap engraved on its lid before she settles on a small pistol. It fits into her hand like an old friend, and she rubs her thumb over the engravings on its handle—M.C.—before she fishes a box of ammo from the drawer and loads it in a few swift movements. The pistol is stashed within the forgiving waistline of her maternity jeans.

****

John comes home that evening smelling like dried winter sweat and motor oil. Mary kisses him a little longer than she normally would, and he smiles into her lips.

“What’s up with you?” he asks, reaching to scoop up the bouncing blur of “Daddy daddy daddy” that’s Dean.

“Nothing,” Mary’s hand drifts to her abdomen again. The pistol shifts against her skin. “Patty told me about that couple today.”

“The ones in the news?” John gives her a thoughtful peck on her cheek and carries Dean over to the fridge, where he grabs a beer. “You scared?”

If it were five years earlier, Mary would be tightening her lips into a suppressed smile. Now, she merely shakes her head.

“Not scared.”

“A little nervous then,” John guesses. He cracks the beer open and gives the cap to Dean to fiddle with. Dean tilts his face to the ceiling and tries to balance the bottle cap on the tip of his snub, freckled nose. Mary does smile then, letting it bloom across her face.

“Nah,” she crosses the kitchen and takes Dean from John. “I got two big boys to protect me. Right, sweetheart?” She bounces Dean on her hip.

“Yeah,” Dean mumbles, attention still fixed on the bottle cap in his chubby fingers. Mary lets him slide down to the floor.

“Go wash your hands,” she nudges him toward the bathroom. “We’re eating soon.”

John’s hand lands on her arm.

“Seriously though,” he says, voice low. “We can have Dean sleep in our room tonight.”

“Mm,” Mary moves toward the stove and pokes at the spaghetti she already knows is done. “I’m letting Patty get to me. She was talking about padlocks.”

John’s laugh is rich, and he kisses Mary right at that good spot behind her ear. Then Dean comes tripping out of the bathroom, and Mary pulls the pot of spaghetti off the stove with a resolute roll of her shoulders and a brisk query of who wants garlic bread.

***

Mary still doesn’t keep up with the news, but even she can’t avoid hearing about the second murder.

“Here’s the kicker: it was the investigator in charge of figuring out that couple’s death,” Lauren tells her as they wait for their children to be released from the preschool. They lean against Lauren’s car, arms crossed and hats pulled over their ears. “They think he went to the house late last night by himself. Probably looking the place over again for clues.” Lauren shakes her head, a plume of vapor filling the air in front of her face. “You know it’s bad when the killer nabs a trained _policeman_.” She tightens her arms. “How they die is what freaks me out.”

“How’s that?” Mary asks.

“They all bled to death but there were no wounds. No one knows how it’s happening,” Lauren says.

Mary straightens automatically.

The doors open then, and a messy line of children stumble into the chilly, sunny day. They’re barely discernible beneath scarves and hats, but Dean materializes soon enough, his Batman backpack bobbing as he runs toward Mary. Lauren straightens to receive her daughter, a darling of a girl who wears her black hair in perpetual pigtails.

“I maked a castle,” Dean tells Mary, reaching up to tug his hat away from his eyes. “Then I knocked it over.”

“That’s the only way to handle castles,” Mary observes, taking his mittened hand in her own. She tells Lauren goodbye and steers Dean through the mess of children and parents until they’re on the familiar sidewalk that leads to their house. Dean swings their joined hands like he would with another child, babbling something that Mary thinks is only half meant for her. She lets the chill air clear her head and touches the small of her back to be sure the pistol is still present.

“Mommy.”

“Mm?” she tilts her head down.

“Am I still getting a little brother or sister?”

“That’s the plan,” Mary assures him. The baby flutters inside her, as if sensing that it’s been mentioned.

“I wanna brother,” Dean announces.

“And if you get a sister?” Mary asks. “I think a sister would be fun.”

“I guess,” Dean rubs at his cheek with his free hand. Then, brusquely, “I still want a brother.”

“Tell you what,” Mary steers them to their front door—she’d be lying if she claimed not to feel some relief at Patty’s empty driveway—“We’ll send a prayer to the angels tonight and let them know.”

Dean sniffs once, then nods.

“Okay.”

***

Mary finds the news plastered across the local newspaper at the grocery store a week later. She’s standing in the checkout line, eyes settling onto then darting away from the headline.

‘Local teenagers found dead,’ it reads. The subhead confirms that their bodies were discovered in the same house as the couple and the investigator. Probably snuck in there for the thrill, Mary thinks.

At the last minute, even though she already has a copy of the paper sitting on her front stoop back at home, Mary grabs the newspaper and practically throws it at the spotty high schooler ringing up her items. He gives Mary a startled look before dragging the newspaper toward him and adding it to her items.

Mary drives home well above the speed limit and crashes her groceries onto the counter. The baby thumps against her insides, and she huffs as she looks down at her belly.

“Yeah I know,” she tells it. “Don’t need you getting uppity.” The baby kicks again, and Mary snorts.

After that, Mary methodically puts away the perishable groceries, makes herself a cup of tea, and settles on the couch with the newspaper in hand. She reads the article carefully, muttering to herself in the house’s silence. At one point, she fetches a pen and starts underlining.

After she’s done, it takes a few seconds of Mary frowning mightily at the throw rug before she heaves herself off the couch and makes a beeline for the pile of old newspapers they keep in the garage. She finds the articles detailing the previous murders and reads those too, her mutterings getting louder and louder until she’s outright talking to herself. By the time she needs to pick Dean up from preschool, the kitchen table is a mess of newspapers, pens, scraps of paper and five differently colored highlighters.

When she finally registers the time, Mary practically sprints from the kitchen with an emphatic “Fuck!”

“What’re you doing with that, Mommy?” Dean asks when he and Mary enter the kitchen twenty minutes later.

“Reading, baby,” Mary helps him out of his coat. “Nap time, bud, hup hup.”

After Dean is put away, Mary stands at the kitchen doorway and places one hand on her hip, the other on her forehead.

“This, Mary Winchester,” she says to the empty kitchen. “Is why you’re not supposed to pay attention to the goddamn news.” With a sigh, she meanders to the table and scans her notes again. Five victims. No connections besides the fact that they’re all killed in the same house and die of blood loss from their eyes, noses, ears…any orifice at all.

Mary puts down the sheaf of papers and putters her lips. Ghost is her first guess; the dead can get creative. She still recalls the ghost she and her mother fought once who could literally turn its victims inside out. Giving someone a nosebleed of death wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’s heard.

She has another few hours before John will be home, and Dean is sound asleep, so Mary really has no excuse _not_ to do what needs to be done next. Still, it takes another cup of tea and a compulsive check that the pistol is loaded before Mary fetches a battered notebook from the hidden drawer in the table.

She places it on her bed and stares hard at it, hands on her hips.

“It’s only that it’s been years, hasn’t it?” She speaks partially to herself, partially to the baby stirring inside her. “They can’t still have the same numbers, can they? They probably all have aliases or are dead.” The baby remains perfectly still, as if to say, ‘Why are you asking me? I’m a 16-week bundle of cells.’

“Hm,” Mary purses her lips, then reaches out and flips the notebook open. Yellowing pages and faded pen stare back at her. Mary lowers herself onto the bright blue comforter and scans the names scribbled in her old handwriting.

It takes some searching, but soon Mary finds the name and number she wants. She all but jabs the buttons on the phone, half knowing that she’ll end up with…

“Hello?” a bright feminine voice asks, her accent rich with the south.

“Hi.” Mary’s heart sinks. “I’m so sorry, this is the number of an old friend of mine. Dylan Campbell?”

“No, don’t know a Dylan Campbell,” the woman tells her kindly. “He probably has a new number. This has been my number for a few years now.”

“Yeah, yeah I figured as much,” Mary tells her. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem hon,” the woman chirps. She sounds like some Southern Belle, Mary decides. Her imagination conjures, briefly, the woman sitting on a porch, sipping iced tea and not knowing the first thing about hunting the undead. Mary thanks the woman, then hangs up and bites her lip as she scrutinizes the notebook.

She starts dialing again.

It takes five tries before she hits a live number.

“Y’ello,” a woman’s smoke-cracked voice crackles over the line. Mary straightens.

“Paula?” she ventures.

“Yeah.” A pause. “Who is this?”

“Sorry, sorry, uh, Mary,” Mary places a hand on her forehead. “Mary Winchester. Campbell! Used to be Campbell, Winchester now.”

“Mary…Samuel and Deanna’s girl?” Paula’s voice rises in pitch. “Well I’ll be damned. How are you, hon?”

“Doing okay,” Mary has to stand and start pacing the floor, bringing the telephone’s cradle with her. “I’m calling because I have a possible job.”

“Well that’s fine, that’s fine,” Paula drawls, and Mary can almost see the old hunter ruffling at her salt-and-pepper hair, deep-set eyes shaded by thick eyebrows. It was how she looked the two or three times Mary spotted her researching for a hunt with her father at the kitchen table. She remembered that she’d tell Mary terrible jokes and wriggle those eyebrows when Mary giggled despite herself.

“I’m sorry to come out of the blue like this,” Mary says in a rush. “I know I said I was out of the business but…” she falters into silence.

“Hon,” Paula tells her, furniture creaking in the background. “You’re a Campbell. Everyone has trouble keeping out of hunting, but I’d imagine it’s twice as hard for you.”

Mary blinks.

“Now,” Paula continues, “you want to give me the stats?”

Mary lists them out as methodically as she can, keeping her voice low as if John might be in the next room over.

Paula remains silent a long time after Mary finishes.

“So you’re sayin’…they just bled out?” she asks.

“Something like that?” Mary poses the phrase as a question. “If I saw the bodies I could probably give something more definite. But this sounds supernatural, doesn’t it?”

“It’s got the hallmarks, sure,” Paula told her.

“My instinct is ghost but I did a background search,” Mary says, perched on the bed again. “And no one’s died in that house since it was built eight years ago. The old lady who used to live there—Helena Donati—died of liver failure about two months ago. Nothing tragic about it; just old age. And she died in the local hospital.”

“Eh, you never know,” Paula says. “She could have had unfinished business strong enough to keep her here. ‘Course she’d need an anchor. Any deep emotional connection to the house?”

“Probably not. She lived there all of three years.”

“But this all started after she died.”

“It started two months after she died, when the couple kicked it. Maybe they brought something with them and it has nothing to do with Donati.”

“Like you said, if you could see the bodies, I feel like that’d clear up a few things,” Paula says after thoughtful silence. Something clinks in the background, and Mary hears liquid pouring.

“I know,” she leans back. “I’m still figuring out the logistics of how that’d work. I’m pretty pregnant and John has no clue about…about the family business.”

“John’s your husband?”

“Yep.”

“I think I remember him. Him and that Impala he drove everywhere. “

“He still has it,” Mary laughs despite herself and enjoys how genuine it sounds. “I call it the other woman; he absolutely dotes over that thing.”

“Not the first man to do as much,” Paula chuckles, low and raspy. “And the turkey in the oven, that your first one?”

“I have a son already. His name’s Dean, after my mom. This’ll be our second.”

“Really now?” Paula’s voice is warm. “Well that’s fine news, Mary. Your parents’d be happy to hear that.”

It’s odd, really, because a minute ago, Mary would have sworn up and down that she’d safely packed all the emotional baggage attached to her parents into the box clearly labeled ‘do not open’ and stuffed it in the back attic of her mind. So it’s a surprise when something cracks inside Mary’s chest.

“Yeah,” she says, hearing how stiffly the word comes out. Quickly, she adds, “Y’know, speaking of family, I have to know. Where’d Uncle Dylan end up? I tried calling him.”

“Ah.”

It’s really all Paula needed to say, but she continues.

“I’m afraid a ghoul got him four years ago, hon,” Paula says in a low voice. “I thought…well, I guess how’d you know?”

Indeed, how on earth would Mary know? She’d cut off those lines of communication herself, and she’d made sure the job had been done right.

Paula must mistake her silence for grief because she adds, “I’m sorry, Mary.”

“No, no,” Mary half laughs. “I’m glad to know. I should be saying sorry for making you break the news.” She mentally glances over the list of the rest of her old friends and family – a solid four or five years old – and decides not to mention any more names.

Paula shuffles on the other end of the line. When she speaks again, her voice is this side of brusque.

“Now Mary, were you planning on taking care of this yourself? Because I can send someone over there to check things out.”

Mary takes several seconds too long to answer. Thirty minutes ago, she’d had every intention of passing her research off to another hunter and letting them take care of it. Now she pauses.

“Let me dig into things a little more,” she says slowly. “I’ll let you know if I want the help.”

She and Paula go over a few more points, Paula assures her that she’ll only call back during working hours, and makes Mary swear up and down to notify her before she goes on any solo ventures. It’s sweet, and it reminds Mary of what her parents would do before she went out to handle a job by herself.

When Mary hangs up, she still has the crack in her chest.

***

That night, she dreams of a dead John and glowing yellow eyes and the rough lips that had once given her goodnight kisses on the crown of her head suddenly crashing against her own lips in a way that she’d always remembered as predatory.

***

Mary compulsively keeps track of the news the next few days.

When she isn’t scanning the daily paper, she does her housework with one ear to the radio. She tunes in to the local TV news station during the day, but not the morning or evening when John is there.

The notes and highlighted articles have been stashed in the secret drawer, on top of the silver knife and ammunition. Mary pulls them out while Dean is at preschool and rereads them with a pencil in hand. Several times a day, she rehashes how she’d whip up a few fake IDs, find a maternity pantsuit by some miracle, and go down to the police station to ask to see the bodies. Immediately after, Mary considers that breaking and entering and dealing with whatever she finds in that house would be much easier route, albeit more risky.

 _Typical Campbell_ , her mother’s voice echoes in her head. In her mind’s eye, her father raises his eyebrows and asks Deanna whether she’s got a better plan. _A few of them_ , her mother snipes back.

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Mary mutters to herself on Thursday morning. She stares with dismay at her reflection in the mirror. More specifically, at the white blouse and skirt she used to wear to professional events. She’s having trouble envisioning how she fit into it.

“I’m going into that house tonight,” Mary tells Paula ten minutes later with her stretchiest sweat pants on and the skirt and blouse in a heap by the dresser.

“You sure?” Paula asks. “I got a hunter in Illinois who could be there in a day.”

Mary hesitates for a split second.

“It’ll be more exploratory than anything else,” she says. “Might not even meet the thing.”

“If you think,” Paula draws the words out. “You call me soon as you get back though.”

“Yes’m boss,” Mary drawls, and grins at Paula’s huff of laughter.

After hanging up, Mary packs a thermos of tea and drives over to the house in question. She parks a bit down the street, beneath an old oak, and has herself a little stakeout.

The police tape still flutters across the front door, but the police themselves seem to have largely exhausted any clues the place has to offer. Their coverage has dwindled to one squad car that idles in the driveway. Mary can’t make out details, but the policeman inside doesn’t look especially attentive. She could probably slip past him.

Mary takes another swig of tea and considers getting things over with now and breaking into the house in the middle of the day. That plan dies quickly; too much chance of a stray neighbor spotting her. Nighttime is safer.

Mary sticks her thermos into its cup holder and drives home with her stomach flip-flopping.

***

“Mary.”

“Hm?” Mary lifts her head and finds John with a forkful of casserole halfway to his mouth. His brows are furrowed ever so slightly.

“You not hungry?” he asks.

Mary blinks at him, then glances down at her plate to find a full serving of casserole and green beans.

“Not very,” she says.

John’s forkful of casserole descends to his plate.

“You sick?” he asks, and he looks like he’s about to reach out and feel her forehead.

“Nah, I had a late lunch. Dean, sweetie, you need to eat those.” Across the table, Dean’s face crumples as he regards the ten green beans scattered across his plate.

“They’re gross,” he growls.

“No they’re not,” Mary picks up one of her own green beans and wriggles it in front of Dean’s nose. “We’ll have a contest, okay? Whoever eats the most wins.”

Dean’s just old enough that he looks at Mary like he’s trying to figure out the catch.

“Winner gets ice cream,” she adds.

Dean’s lips press together, and then he picks up one of his green beans and shoves it into his mouth with screwed up eyes.  

Mary catches John’s eye again. His brows are still furrowed, but he’s continued eating his casserole.

Three hours later, when Dean has been cleaned of ice cream and put to bed, Mary half expects John to confront her somehow. But he collapses into bed, exchanges a few slow kisses with her, and falls asleep without more than five words exchanged. Mary can’t blame him; work has been hard at the garage lately.

She lies next to John with her eyes wide open and considering that she shouldn’t be so pleased at how quickly he falls asleep.

When the clock downstairs chimes one in the morning, Mary eases herself from the bed, grabs the pile of clothes left on the dresser, and changes in the living room. It’s almost too easy, the way she pads to the driveway and slips into the car – her supplies already hidden in the back seat – and drives into the night.

When she arrives in the target house’s neighborhood, she parks in a cul-de-sac a few streets away and walks the rest of the way, shotgun slung across her back and pistol rubbing against her back.

The house is dark when Mary approaches it. No police cruisers are visible, so Mary acts fast and veers around to the backyard. She finds a back door and makes short work of the lock. The baby kicks a few times, as if chastising her for the law breaking.

“All for a good cause, hon,” she murmurs to it as she opens the door and steps into what looks like a mudroom. She pauses, opening her senses to the house. No voices drift to her, no sound of breathing or shifting floors. Satisfied, Mary pulls out her shotgun already loaded with rock salt, checks that her knife and pistol are both in place, clicks on her flashlight, then moves forward.

The thrill in her gut is all nostalgia. She can almost hear her mother’s catlike treads next to her; smell her father’s aftershave. Almost as if they never left her.

The mudroom leads to the kitchen, which in turn opens up to a dining room. Mary’s flashlight skitters across wallpaper decorated with roses and golden pears, then slides to the floor and picks out a splash of brown on the beige carpet. She pauses and eyes the markers left by the police. That would be from the teenagers, found together under the table with their eyes and ears bleeding out.

A creak of wood breaks the silence.

Mary’s shotgun swings up out of instinct, her heart in her throat. Five seconds, ten seconds pass, and nothing rushes out of the darkness to attack her. Mary drops the shotgun’s muzzle to the ground and exhales hard. Her heart is still throwing itself against her ribcage a whole lot harder than it should be. And of course the baby chooses now to drive one hard kick into her stomach. She almost doubles over.

“Goddamn kiddo,” she breathes, the hand with the flashlight landing her abdomen. “Time and place for that.”

Still rubbing at her belly, Mary adjusts her grip on the shotgun and moves forward again. She finds the stairs leading to the second floor and climbs them quickly, not as focused anymore on stealth. She feels like the thing that’s here already knows about her.

The stairs dump her into a small hallway with four doors. One of them proves to be a bathroom, the next a closet, and the third is completely empty. Mary pauses at the threshold of that one. It takes her a minute to put together the walls halfway painted bright green, the pile of clothes in a corner, the pieces of a crib that still need to be put together.

“Oh,” she mouths.

Mary’s hand is on her belly again when she makes her way down the hall to the fourth door.

It leads into a master bedroom. Mary’s eyes immediately flick down and find wide swaths of brown. Makes sense, she considers. Three adults bleed themselves dry and the mess is bound to be significant. She starts moving around the room, eyeing framed photographs and messy dresser tops for clues.

Mary doesn’t notice it the first few seconds, which is honestly unforgivable and if nothing else, a sign that she’s been out of the game for too long. But eventually she registers the warmth creeping across her cheek. She raises one hand and swipes her thumb across her face; she finds something wet. On instinct, Mary sticks the thumb in her mouth. It tastes like salt and copper.

“Shit.”

Mary stashes the flashlight and takes the shotgun in hand again. Her skin tingles and she tries to sense a chill, a whisper, anything at all.

The people in the framed photographs stare out at her.

The bleeding is quickening. Mary blinks hard to see through the blood that trickles from the corners of her eyes and clumps up her eyelashes. Her nose is starting to seep, her mouth tastes metallic, and a disconcerting thickness is building up in her ears.

Then, through all that, she catches a whiff of something cooking.

The next second, she finds a person staring at her.

It resembles a man. Impossible to tell his age. In the dim light Mary can see olive toned skin and a thatch of curly brown hair. He has wide eyes and his mouth is half open like he’s about to say something.

Mary raises the shotgun and sends a package of rock salt into his face.

The man stumbles backward from the force of it instead of dissolving, which kills the idea of this thing being a ghost. Mary tries sinking her boot into the man’s middle and almost smiles at his solidity, at how readily he topples to the floor. While the man is down, she yanks the silver knife from her hip holster and slams it into his chest. The man jerks once then goes still, his eyes still open. Blood blooms across his tunic.

Silence fills the room, punctuated by Mary’s breath coming out in short bursts. She stands slowly and scrubs at the blood crusting on her upper lip, frowning down at the man. A fresh bout of blood gushes across Mary’s fingers and drips into her shirt.

“Goddamnit,” Mary mutters.

A small sound, like a grunt. Mary looks down to find dark brown eyes glinting in the streetlight that filters through the window. He’s smiling.

Suddenly, a door clacks downstairs. Male voices drift up to them.

Mary freezes.

The man starts to push himself into a sit.

“No,” Mary hisses, and reaches this time for the iron stake and hefts it in her hand. The man jerks backward but too slowly to avoid the stake when slams it into his throat. The man’s eyes widen, but the next second, his lips curl into a smile.

“Too many layers of death on me already, my lady,” he chokes out in a graveled voice that doesn’t sound properly human. Blood burbles around the stake in his throat. “Iron isn’t going to pierce them any better than salt or silver.”

Before Mary can puzzle out what the hell he’s talking about, the man begins to dissolve. Not the way a ghost dissolves, but into a thick smoke. It would remind Mary of a demon, but rather than the stink of sulfur she gets a deep whiff of burnt meat. The iron stake flags without corporeal support. Mary pulls it from the frothing cloud of smoke and stashes it back into its holster, eyes never leaving the space where the man’s face had been. The voices downstairs swell and fade in a rhythm.

All of a sudden, the smoke gathers itself and rushes into Mary’s face like a blast of heat from a bonfire. Mary straightens and steps back, sputtering. The smoke and blood combine in her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and it makes her gag and tear up.

Within seconds, the smoke is gone. Mary bends over to spit on the floor, trying to get rid of the taste of copper and burnt meat.

The stairs groan with someone’s weight.

With a swallow of the blood pooling in her mouth and a shot of adrenaline, Mary straightens. She strides unsteadily toward the window, shoves it open and clambers onto the roof. She takes a few seconds to gauge the strip of lawn toward which the roof slopes, but then someone speaks behind her – way too close – and Mary leaps forward.

She lands badly. One second the grass is rushing toward her, and the next she’s caught up in a whirl of motion before she finally stops in a crumpled heap. Pain splashes across her abdomen; all the breath flees her lungs. She might be in shock, because Mary lies in the grass for way too long, trying to get a good breath and ascertain that she hasn’t broken or sprained anything. And behind that she hears the rising, blind panic of _ohgodthebabythebabyisthebabyalrightohgod._

Her dad would be tearing her a new one right now.

With a low groan, Mary finally pulls herself into a stand. She sways in the chilly air and feels another drop of hot blood land on her shirt. Nothing moves inside her belly.

“HEY!” someone yells from the window.

Swiping blood from her eyes, Mary drunkenly sprints across the lawn and into the neighbor’s yard. She keeps running until she reaches the cul-de-sac and her car, and at that point her lungs feel like they’re ready to split at the seams.

Still on autopilot, Mary unlocks the car and slides inside, turning on the shotgun’s safety before tossing it in the back seat. She slams the key into the ignition and peels away from the curb. The taste of burning meat lingers in her mouth and throat and her abdomen still hurts.

The baby still hasn’t moved.

The whole drive home, she keeps one eye to the rearview mirror, just waiting for red and blue lights to swirl into view. They never do.

Mary pulls into her driveway ten minutes later with her heart still in her throat and her hands shaking. She turns off the engine and sits in the dark car with her breath gusting in and out. It takes a few more seconds for the sound building up in her throat to burst from her mouth.

“Oh God,” she croaks. “Oh God oh god ohgodohgodohgod.” Her hands cover her mouth and she leans forward, staring blankly at the dashboard. “Oh _god_.”

When she pulls her hands away from her face, they’re dabbed with red.

The baby still hasn’t moved.

In a fit of movement, Mary yanks open the glove compartment and pulls out a tub of baby wipes. Blinking hard, she rubs the wipes across her cheeks and under her nose, drags clumps of clotting blood off her eyelashes like it’s old, thick mascara. She stains five wipes pink and red, dropping them in the footwell.

The baby still hasn’t moved.

She needs to put away her weapons and change her clothes. She needs to call Paula and let her know she’s safe.

But the baby isn’t moving.

Mary sits in the car and waits.

***

The baby kicks at 4:53 a.m., two hours later.

Mary cries.


	2. Chapter 2

 

> _Blessed art thou amongst women_
> 
> _And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus_

“You sure you’re okay?” Paula asks for the third time.

“Paula.”

“Yeah yeah, sorry,” Paula grumps. “Not like I’ve been stayin’ up all night waitin’ for a call.”

Mary deflates.

“Sorry I’m just—“ she cuts herself off when something in the house creaks. Three, five seconds of silence. When Mary speaks again, her voice drops a few decibels. “I’m just a little shaken up.” She doesn’t specify what exactly has done the shaking.

“Mm,” Paula grunts, like she has a few things she could say but is keeping them to herself. “You want to discuss this now or wait ‘til tomorrow?”

“Now.” Mary says immediately. She compulsively fiddles with her nightgown as she describes what she found in the house.

“It wasn’t a ghost,” she says. “Nothing that silver, iron or salt could kill.” She hesitates. “It said something about having layers of death.”

“Layers of death?” Paula repeats. “Never heard of that one.”

“It probably made it up to sound impressive,” Mary shrugs even though Paula can’t see her. “It was human-like in how it spoke. Seemed very cognizant.”

“That don’t narrow things down too much,” Paula muses. “I guess…well, poltergeists can get pretty smart.”

“Do they become smoke?”

“Maybe,” Paula says. “Poltergeists are a grab-bag of weird shit; I wouldn’t be all that surprised.”

“Hm,” Mary glances at the clock hanging on the wall and winces. “Hey Paula,” she says. “John’s going to be up soon.”

“Sure sure,” Paula says. A moment of palpable hesitation. “About that hunter in Illinois…”

“Oh.” Mary inhales and rubs at her forehead. “Yeah, you’d better send him over.”

“I’m not insinuatin’ you can’t handle this, Mary—“

“Insinuate away,” Mary says around a harsh laugh. “I’m rusty, Paula. Real, real rusty. I uh…” She laughs again. “I screwed up tonight. And I don’t think…I don’t think I ought to keep going with this.”

Paula adjusts the phone, sending a crackle of static.

“It’s your call,” she says, her voice steady.

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t you apologize.”

Mary’s lips stretch into a smile that’s suppressing another bout of tears.

“I can give him my notes when he gets here,” she offers.

“May be awhile. He’s mired in a weird string of murders. Folks being found with their organs mashed to a pulp inside them.”

“Sounds nasty,” Mary comments.

“Yer telling me—“

Mary lifts her head suddenly, nostrils flaring. A whiff of burnt food drifts past her nose and then is gone just as quickly.

“—keep you posted,” Paula is saying.

“Y-yeah.” Mary ducks her head to the receiver again. “I’d appreciate that. And if this guy needs any info, tell him to call—“

“During business hours, I know,” Paula says, though her tone is warm. “Hey, Mary, you sure you’re okay?”

Mary, usually the queen of grinning and bearing, bites her lip.

“No,” she says. “But I will be, if I can just…put this all away, y’know?”

“That’s fine,” Paula says. “Nothing wrong with that.”

She sounds so sure, and it leaves Mary feeling bereft somehow.

*******

Mary doesn’t listen to the news at all for the next week. She finds herself incessantly stopping and rubbing her belly whenever the baby shifts.

Paula calls once to let her know that the hunter is driving toward Lawrence. Mary responds by taking her notes to the local library, making copies of them, and stashing the copies in the mailbox of an empty house—still on the market trying to sell—that stands a few blocks away. She gives Paula the house’s address and tells her that she’s done with the job; doesn’t need to hear anymore about it.

By the end of that week, John has asked Mary multiple times why she’s been so distant.

“I’m not,” Mary always says. That or “the pipes keep rattling at night, it keeps me up,” or “Dean’s preschool is having their Christmas party and I volunteered to organize it. You’d think it’d be easier to come up with games for a bunch of 3-year-olds.”

She gives the last explanation on Sunday night while she and John are getting ready for bed. She’s in the bathroom scrubbing at her teeth (the blood is gone but she can still taste it. That and the smell of burnt meat); he’s under the covers, lying on his side and with his head propped up by one hand.

“It’s still November,” he says.

“The party is early December.” Mary scrutinizes her reflection, then spits into the sink’s basin and exhales hard.

“Mary.”

“ _What_?” Mary turns and finds that John has sat up. They watch one another for a few seconds too long, and Mary breaks eye contact first. She sticks her toothbrush in its holder and reaches for her bottle of lotion.

John waits until she finishes smearing it across her legs and hands. When she has no other mundane tasks to do, Mary sluggishly makes her way to the bed. She slips beneath the covers and chances a glance at her husband, just in case he takes the hint and turns off the light.

Nope, never mind. He’s got that _look_.

“I’m just worried—“ he starts.

“John.”

“No, hear me out. You’re not sleeping well.”

“I’m sleeping fine.”

“No, you’ve been kicking and sleep-talking the last few nights. Woken me up more than once.”

Mary stares.

“What do I say?” she asks, voice low.

“Gibberish,” John says, his head tilting. “It just doesn’t sound like happy things.”

Mary bites her upper lip and picks at the blanket.

“Mary.”

If Mary wants to be completely genuine with herself, this is part of what enamored her to John in the first place. This genuine concern, the soft way he’d approach her. It was always such a thrilling departure from hunting and the hardness it demanded. But at the moment, Mary wishes John could keep his nose out of her business.

“I’ve been thinking about my parents lately,” she finally says. (Her dad always told her to keep close to the truth when she lied.)

John makes a low sound, but doesn’t move to touch her at all. God bless him, he knows her so well. Mary’s throat tightens; this is exactly why she discarded the hunting life in the first place. Why she usually never listens to the news, never opens that damn drawer hidden in her mother’s table. It’s never fair to the family, is her experience. Not fair to John, not fair to Dean, not fair to the baby she almost got killed in a bout of trying to be something she wasn’t anymore. She _knows_ this. It just baffles her — terrifies her — that she fell back into it so easily. Like an alcoholic into the liquor bottle.

John remains quiet while Mary sighs.

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I’ll think I’ve come to terms with the fact that they’re gone and then it comes crashing back.”

“Babe,” John says, “you lost them both in one day. It’s allowed to still be traumatizing.”

 _I lost you too_. The thought shoots through Mary’s mind without warning, leaving her feeling a little nauseated. She grabs at her belly compulsively.

“I don’t know,” she repeats, and ducks her face into the blankets. It’s a sign for John to reach across the space between them and kiss the crown of her head.

Like her dad used to.

Mary shudders.

***

Mary worries at her lower lip while she waits for Dean to jam on his boots. He started insisting a week ago that he could put his _own_ shoes on, Mommy, no, don’t _help_ he’s _got_ it.

“We’re going to be late, honey,” Mary says for the third time.

“Yeah o _kay_ ,” Dean’s pink tongue is hanging from his mouth as he tugs at his shoes and loses his grip.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes’m,” Dean rectifies. He stands, stamps his foot, and the shoe pops onto his foot easy as you like. He looks up at Mary with such an expression of “how d’you like _them_ apples?” that Mary feels like she’s looking into a mirror.

“Good thinking,” she says and grabs hold of Dean’s hand to lead him outside. The kid’s smart, she considers as she locks the door. He’d have made a good hunter.

(She shuts down that line of thinking so fast it makes her head spin.)

“Hey,” Dean says absently as he crouches to examine the newest patch of mud from last night’s rain. “Hey mommy.”

“Mm?” Mary touches his shoulder, and he stands to take her hand.

“What’s the baby’s name gonna be?” Dean asks.

“We’re still thinking about it,” Mary says truthfully. “What do you think?”

“Robin,” Dean says without hesitation. He peers up at Mary. “I’m Batman and he’s Robin. And,” here he looks especially pleased with himself. “There’s a girl Robin in class but she says Robin is also a boys name so it can work for both.”

“Really now?” Mary muses.

“Yeah.” Dean kicks at a pebble.

Mary plays with the sound of the name. Robin. A little old-fashioned. Makes her think of Winnie the Pooh.

“Mommy,” Dean speaks up again. “I still want a brother.”

“I’ve talked to the angels about it,” Mary tells him. “They’ve filed our request and said the ultimate decision is pending.”

Dean squints at her then focuses on his shoes again because sometimes his mother’s gibberish needs to be ignored. Mary grins; she can’t help it. Her dad used to do the exact same thing to her; his face deadpan as he talked about suing Santa for breaking and entering while five-year-old Mary panicked and her mother choked back laughter in the background.

Rather than flick the memory aside, Mary lets it sit in her head the whole time she walks Dean to the preschool, gives him a hug goodbye, and starts making her way back to the house. She expands it, trying to remember the little details of her childhood Christmases. They’d go to her maternal grandparents’ house on the years there wasn’t a hunt. If Uncle Dylan was around, he’d bring eggnog and give everyone bags of rock salt as presents. He was the one to give Mary her first shotgun, and she still remembers him taking her to the backyard to try shooting it.

Mary opens her front door – mind still on Uncle Dylan and his shotgun – and pauses. Her nostrils flare with a whiff of burning.

Dropping her purse, she rushes into the kitchen and heads straight for the stove. But when she reaches it, she finds all the knobs in the “off” position.

Straightening, Mary lets her eyes drift across the kitchen. A little more slowly, she checks the oven, the toaster, the microwave. Nothing.

The baby shifts inside her, and it echoes the way Mary’s stomach is flip-flopping. The smell isn’t an electric kind of burning, but she checks the water boiler and heating/cooling system anyway. And then, while she’s at it, Mary combs the house for electric appliances left on or small fires that could have popped up while she was dropping Dean off. It’s been known to happen. Anyone knows that.

The smell gets stronger.

After Mary has scoured her bathroom for the third time, she moves to stand in the middle of her and John’s bedroom. It takes a moment for her to lick her lips and try a, “Hello?”

Nothing answers her, of course. Mary inhales and wrinkles her nose; the stench of burnt meat is thick.

“Didn’t expect you to be such a sulker,” she tries again. “If you’re trying to prove you’re not another punk ass ghost, you’re doing a shit job of it.”

Ten seconds pass. Twenty. And then, almost imperceptibly, smoke begins to coalesce a few paces away from her. Keeping her eyes trained on the smoke, Mary eases the pistol from it usual place and transfers it to her pocket. The smoke gathers itself into a column and stops there, swirling steadily.

“I want a face,” Mary says.

The column of smoke sways slightly, then starts to condense. The man takes shape slowly, and Mary can’t help but wonder whether he’s showing off. The man looks more or less the same when he becomes visible. He straightens, waves a few stray wisps of smoke away, then looks at Mary with the corners of his mouth pulled into an imitation smile.

Mary waits for him to do something, to say something, but he continues to watch her like she’s an interesting item at a museum.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Mary finally asks. Her fingernails dig into the flesh of her palm.

The man’s head tilts to the right.

“I am tired and bored and you are interesting,” he says. Like an afterthought, “All covered in demon and angel fingerprints, this family. Like the result of two dogs and a pissing contest.”

“Angels?” Mary blurts despite herself.

“Big hands have claimed this bloodline, oaths signed and sealed with a kiss—“

A gunshot cracks through his words. The man looks down to find red blossoming across his stomach. He looks up at Mary, at her pistol steady in her hands, and gives her his first genuine grin.

“Already died too many times,” he says.

Then, in the next second, the man becomes a cloud of black smoke that dissipates and leaves behind that burnt food odor. Mary’s grinds her teeth and stashes the pistol back into her pants. Her hands are shaking.

She should be staggering under the realization that she’s got a powerful, unknown spirit under her roof. Or wondering why this thing seems convinced that angels are a) real and b) involved in her life.

But beneath all that, hot and pulsing, is the memory of yellow eyes and her father’s mouth saying words that aren’t his and John’s head lolling at the wrong angle and the kiss that drew blood and tasted like sulfur.

Both of Mary’s hands come up to clutch at her abdomen. As if that’s enough of an apology to the life inside.

Mary isn’t sure how long she stands there, but when she does stir again, the burnt smell is a faint afterthought. She’s not sure what that means. Whether the spirit can leave the house completely or whether it’s bound. Whether it can see her now.

Mary takes a steadying breath, shoves down memories of the yellow-eyed demon, and looks at her options. Calling Paula presents itself, but she shies away from the idea. She doesn’t want to hear the woman react to Mary letting a murderous spirit follow her back to her house.

She could wait and see what the spirit does. But that feels like the epitome of foolhardiness, as her mom used to say.

Her mom. What would her mom be saying right now? Beyond scolding her, that is.

 _No good sitting around and being scared,_ Deanna’s voice echoes through Mary’s mind. _You stop grab-assing and start figuring things out._

If only it were so easy.

***

Mary dreams about yellow eyes that night.

She wakes up to John’s arms around her and his low voice close to her. She clutches him back, feels the baby stir inside her, and feels like she’s being torn in two.

***

Two nights later, Mary wakes up and slips into the bathroom. She splashes cold water over her face to try and get rid of the vestiges of another nightmare. Still involving yellow eyes and a crying baby and John dead. Mary shakes her head as if to push it all away.

The bedroom is still dark when she emerges, but for a few seconds after she opens the bathroom door and before she flicks off the switch, a rectangle of yellow light bathes the bed. In those few seconds, Mary sees the streaks of glistening red on John’s cheeks. The whiff of smoke slams into her like nausea.

Mary’s flight to the bed is fueled by the kind of ferocity that she remembers from hunts where her parents were in danger. It’s the pure adrenaline that used to let her charge into vampire nests with nothing but a gun and a battle cry. She does that now, leaping to her husband and snarling at the invisible smoke that curls around him.

“You said we were already claimed!” she spits, her hands coming down on John’s face like that will protect him. “Bigger things than some spirit. _Get the hell out of here_!”

She senses a pressure on her eardrums, a whiff of charred meat so strong she wants to gag.

 _Whatever you say, Mother Mary,_ something whispers just out of the range of hearing. The charred smell drops away like it’s trying to be innocent.

“The hell?”

Mary lifts her hands and they’re covered in blood again. John’s blood on her hands again.

“Mary?”

“You’re bleeding,” Mary says, backing up a pace. She wonders whether John heard her snarling. When John props himself up on his elbows, looks at her with wide eyes and a low brow, she suspects that he did.

He touches at his cheeks and lips and examines his fingers almost casually.

“Damn nosebleeds,” he finally says. “It’s this dry air.” He glances up at her. He has a question on his face but he foregoes asking it. “Mary, I’m fine.”

Mary nods then excuses herself to check on Dean.

***

When Mary enters the kitchen the next morning, John takes one look at her and offers to drop Dean off at preschool on the way to work. His skin is clean of blood; his eyes don’t even look bloodshot.

“What?” Mary says dumbly right as Dean straightens in his seat and yells, “Yeah!”

Mary rolls in her lips and reaches down to wipe a dribble of milk from Dean’s chin.

“It’s not trouble for me,” she says without quite meeting John’s eye. She hears him move closer, and then a pair of dry, warm lips rest briefly on her forehead.

“Euugghh,” Dean gags from beneath them.

Mary peers up to find John watching her with eyebrows knit together.

“Let me,” he says. Mary exhales and nods.

Five minutes later, while cleaning the remains of Dean’s breakfast, Mary keeps one eye on her husband and son as they leave the kitchen. Angel fingerprints all over them, the spirit had said. Mary “ _hmph_ ”s and carries the bowl to the sink.

Mary takes her time tidying the house that morning and lets her thoughts follow the rhythm of her movements. When she places the last mug in the cupboard, she lets her arm fall back to her side and stands there for several seconds.

She should call Paula, but she still doesn’t want to. She should find some way to kill unkillable spirits, but she’s not sure where she’d start. Finally, Mary fetches her books and notes and carries them all downstairs. She spreads all of it on the kitchen table and, hands on hips, frowns down at the papers as if they’ll give her an answer.

Three hours later, they don’t.

Mary slams down the book she’d been flipping through and stalks to the bathroom.

“You’re an idiot Mary,” she mutters to herself after she’s done her business and is washing her hands. “Letting that thing in the house. As if—“

A whiff of burnt food.

Something thumps in the kitchen.

It’s pure instinct for Mary’s hands to find the pistol tucked against the small of her back and turn off the safety.

She eases the bathroom door open and pads along the hallway, her body thrumming with adrenaline. But not the scattered, useless kind; it’s the adrenaline that makes every movement purposeful and her mind hyperaware of its surroundings.

Something shuffles. It’s in the kitchen.

Mary takes a breath, then rounds the corner and raises the pistol.

John’s head lifts from the pile of papers he’d been examining.

The kitchen descends into something worse than silence. It’s something thick and suffocating, something that fills Mary’s throat and lungs and brain so that all she can do is keep standing there with the pistol pointed at her husband.

John blinks.

The pistol flags. Mary turns the safety back on and lets it hang from one hand. Her eyes flick down and she finds her notes – highlighted, bedraggled, too-often-folded things – in John’s hand. He can’t have read them. Not thoroughly. Maybe glanced over them out of some curiosity.

“You’re home early,” Mary says. She’s shocked at how steadily her voice comes out.

John doesn’t answer for several seconds too long.

“I forgot some paperwork,“ he says. He’s still holding onto the notes.

“Oh.”

They watch one another for another handful of seconds. (A full minute can’t have passed since Mary entered the kitchen and it almost makes her break into hysterical laughter.)

John inhales through his mouth. “You wanna tell me…” he gestures with the notes at the pistol. Mary looks down at it, at the “M.C.” engraved in the handle.

“It was my dad’s,” she says, truthfully. “I um,” she passes the gun to her other hand. “I keep it on hand just in case. Not anywhere Dean would find it,” Mary licks her lips. “But on hand.”

John nods once; a single downward tilt of his head.

“Right,” he says. His voice is still flat. “Your dad teach you how to point guns at people?”

“Yeah,” Mary says.

“Were you ever going to tell me about that?”

“Yes,” Mary says.

“Really.”

The word is a sting across Mary’s face; John might as well have slapped her.

“Mary, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“What—?”

“The constantly waking up screaming. Saying….I don’t even know what when I have a nosebleed. The sneaking around in the middle of the night.” Mary feels like someone just punched her in the guts. “Yeah, as if I didn’t notice that,” John’s voice is growing louder but not less terrifyingly flat. “And now you’re whipping guns out of…and this,” he shakes the notes, and Mary winces. “Why’re you highlighting murder cases. I mean, what’s _wrong_? And why can’t you _tell_ me?”

Mary opens her mouth, but her throat is closed up.

 _You were dead and I made a deal with a demon nine years ago and my parents hunted vampires and ghosts and I did too and I ran away to_ you _because I wanted better for Dean and this baby but this baby is going to be visited by a demon and I’ve let some spirit come into my house and it all terrifies me John what do you want me to say? What the hell do you want me to say?_

“Well?” John’s expression is thunderous by now.

“I—“ Mary inhales. “I don’t—“

“Fine,” John drops the notes and Mary nearly gasps. “Fine,” John repeats. He grabs the keys he’d left on the table. “You let me know when you want to make sense again.”

He’s gone before Mary can speak.

***

After John leaves, Mary sits at the kitchen table and examines her notes without seeing them. In the first hour, she waits for John to call her and apologize for his behavior. He’ll ask if they can talk when he gets home. He’ll offer to make dinner and get Dean in bed. He’ll sit with her on their bed and ask quiet questions because John Winchester is a good man and he loves Mary dearly.

It’s going to kill him.

With that thought, Mary stands and crosses the kitchen to the phone. She calls the garage where John works. Harvey, the skinny, tall coworker who always calls Mary “ma’am” and Dean “champ” answers. She asks to speak to her husband. She listens to Harvey shouting for Winchester. A radio echoes in the background.

“Mary.”

Mary’s posture slumps a little at that voice saying that name because she always hears how reverently it’s done.

“Mary?” John repeats when Mary gives him too much silence. “I’m sorry, hon. I shouldn’t have—I had no right to snap like that.”

“It’s fine,” Mary says. She’s blinking hard. “I’ve been acting odd lately, I know that. And I owe you an explanation.”

“We can discuss it—“

“I’ve been seeing someone,” Mary cuts in. One deep, hard thrust to get the job done. It’s more merciful.

Michael Jackson thumps in the background. Mary doesn’t remember the name of the song.

“What?” John’s voice means that Mary can imagine how he’s grimace-smiling.

“I’ve been seeing someone for about two months,” Mary shoves forward. “And I don’t…” she trails off.

Silence for so long that Mary might have thought John had hung up, except she can still hear Michael Jackson.

“Could you not have told me to my face…Mary, I’m at work,” John tells her in a thin voice, as if that’s the real issue here.

“I’m sorry,” Mary says, and she means it too. “I can pack up. I’ll go to a motel—“ Maybe the spirit will follow her there.

“No.” John’s sigh rattles the speaker. “No. Just. I’m at _work_.” Another pause. “I’ll call you back.”

“John—“

 _Click_. No more Michael Jackson.

***

“Where’s Daddy?” Dean asks that night. Mary reaches across the table and smooths down Dean’s hair.

“He has a late night at work,” she says.

“Can we see him later?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh.” Dean takes another bite of mac and cheese. He remains silent the rest of dinner.

When Mary puts him to bed a few hours later, he suddenly reaches up and grabs her cheeks. Mary freezes, awkwardly bent over the bed but sensing that she shouldn’t move. Dean frowns up at her, green eyes squinted.

“Don’t be sad,” he orders. He pats her right cheek. “I love you.”

Mary can’t tell what her face is doing; it feels like a smile but her chest hurts and she has hot pinpricks in her eyes and the bridge of her nose tingles.

“Love you too, baby.” Dean drops his hands and Mary presses a kiss to the crown of his head.

She has to lean against the wall when she leaves Dean’s room, one hand buried in her hair. The baby stirs, and Mary automatically runs a hand across her belly. She looks at the empty hallway.

She straightens.

***

When Mary drops Dean off at preschool the next morning, she signs him up for the afternoon day care the school offers. She says that she will be back for her son by six that evening. She hopes it gives her enough time. Just in case, she holds a slightly squirming Dean a few moments longer than her usual goodbye hugs. She tells him that he’s a good, brave boy and she loves him very much.

Dean pauses at that, studying her in a way that Mary finds almost intimidating. Dean, she’s starting to suspect, understands people in ways that go beyond his years.

He’s also three years old, though, so when she leaves, he’s steering a blue-and-red plastic ambulance around the carpet and doesn’t spare her more than a chubby-handed wave.

From the preschool, Mary drives to the grocery store and makes a beeline for the payphones lined up on the wall next to the bathrooms. She sits herself in front of the phone nearest to the corner and extracts a handful of coins from her pocket. A cursory glance around, and Mary sticks several quarters into the slot before dialing Paula’s number.

She’s lucky; she picks up almost immediately.

“Y’ello?”

“It’s Mary.”

“Mary?” Paula’s surprise is audible. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…” Mary coughs out a laugh. “I need some help.”

Keeping her voice low and steady, Mary describes the events of the past few days.

“So yer wanting some way to kill it,” Paula finally says.

“Kill it. Trap it. Get it under control,” Mary agrees. “I’m calling from the grocery store so it won’t hear this.”

“Tha’s smart,” Paula says, and Mary feels a little rush of pride despite herself.

“Ah, got it,” Paula shuffles through something a few minutes later. “Got a pen and paper handy?”

Mary scribbles down a list of ingredients and directions, then repeats them back to Paula to be sure that they’re correct.

“You’ve cast spells before?” Paula asks when Mary finishes.

“Enough,” Mary says. She glances over the notes again. “This doesn’t look too complicated.”

“It’s super general,” Paula warns her. “The bind would be tighter if you knew exactly what you were working with. But it’ll do well enough.”

“I hope so,” Mary says. Her voice is firm.

***

Mary has to thank god that, as a college town, Lawrence has enough obscure Wicca and specialty shops to supply her ingredients. She puts the spell together in her car in the driveway; no point losing the element of surprise by preparing it in the kitchen where the spirit can peer over her shoulder.

The result is a powder that she’s supposed to arrange in a pentagram. Theoretically, she should speak the right words, yank the spirit into the pentagram, and keep it there.

The bag of powder in hand, Mary re-enters the house and, as has become her habit, sniffs the air. Nothing.

She moves quickly, grabbing a bottle of superglue from the kitchen and descending to the basement. She finds the dustiest, most abandoned corner and squirts the glue bottle to make a thick line. She sprinkles the powder liberally over the wet glue, and keeping going until she has a recognizable if rough pentagram. A quick blow assures her that the glue is keeping at least some of the powder in place.

Mary finishes, stands, and surveys her work. And then, because there’s really nothing else for it, she speaks the words Paula gave her.

She’s only halfway through the incantation when a sharp whistling pierces the basement’s silence. Mary keeps talking but glances around her. A line of wispy black smoke is streaming above her head as if caught in a miniature jet stream. As Mary watches, it gathers itself in the pentagram. It churns viciously; the smell of burning meat washes over her in hot waves.

For thirty seconds, she thinks that it’s going to work. The smoke seems to bash against invisible walls, churning so thick and black that it almost doesn’t look real. Mary bulls forward with the incantation, her voice rising.

She feels when the balance of power throws itself sideways, when she starts to lose her grip on it. She can almost see the walls crumple like paper, a great focused force that weakens their integrity.

The smoke billows; it starts to fill the basement enough that Mary starts having trouble seeing the opposite wall, and her breathing comes in quicker and quicker spurts.

A general holding spell, Paula had warned her. She’s an idiot.

Teeth grinding, Mary finishes the incantation. She watches as the smoke still meets resistance at the walls of the pentagram but is pushing through it, one great heave after another. She has a minute at most.

Mary sprints across the basement and up the stairs; she ignores the awkward sway of her belly and focuses on jumping two, three steps at time. Up to the ground floor, then another set of stairs to her mother’s table. She pops open the drawer and yanks its contents out without prejudice, scattering them across the floor that hasn’t been vacuumed in four, five days.

The book, when she finds it, is a battered little thing, designed to slip into a back pocket. Mary’s mother had gotten it off of another hunter sometime when Mary had been ten or eleven. She still remembers flipping through the worn pages, lingering over spells and incantations, general tips for spells and traps.

“The hunter’s pocket ‘Joy of Cooking,’” Deanna Campbell had called it. She used to pull out her reading glasses, flip open the little book, and pull out a spell for the latest hunt.

When Mary has the book in her hand, she sprints back down the steps so recklessly that she probably ought to have fallen at some point. Something keeps her on her feet though. Maybe it’s the angels.

She’s found the page that details binding spells by the time she clatters into the basement. She nearly drops the book when she hits the wall of thick smoke that fills the basement, stifling in its heat and the reek of burnt meat. Mary blinks furiously against the smoke and the sudden stinging at the corners of her eyes that a moment later turns into the sensation of slick, hot liquid across her cheek.

That’s fine though, Mary thinks in a burst of vicious delight. Just makes things easier for her.

Mary smears her palm across her cheek and lips, gathering as much of her blood as she can. She looks down at the book still held in her clean hand and starts reading, striding forward with her bloodied hand up like a weapon.

The smoke screeches after the first line. By the fourth line, it pulls back into itself and writhes like a dying thing. Mary keeps walking forward and screams the words now, shredding her throat and not noticing or not caring.

The last syllable of the incantation leaves her lips. Something hot jolts through her blood, veins into her bone marrow and pricks at any nerve endings she might claim. Mary screams, and the smoke screams harder.

Mary can’t open her eyes. She feels like someone’s sewn the lids together, and that makes her gut roll.

But when she brushes her fingers to her eyes (she still has fingers that respond to her; that’s a good thing) she finds thick lashes, covered in crumbling solids. She fumbles at the dried blood and opens her eyes. They feel raw.

She’s still standing with her bloodied hand out, although she can’t say how she’s held that position. The basement lights have been turned off, or perhaps the bulbs broke. The only illumination is a wash of pale yellow from the open basement door. It’s enough to light up Mary’s hands and, before her, the remains of her pentagram.

Inside sits a man colored in sharp shadows.

He does not glower at her or curse at her. He sits perfectly still and watches her like a cat: attentive and not inclined to clueing Mary in on his thoughts.

Mary allows herself another several gusting breathes. She unlocks her joints and lowers her hand slightly. The baby stirs inside her.

“You,” she starts, and the man’s head tilts slightly. “You picked the wrong house to haunt.”

The man smiles, and it’s like he understands the theory but not the spirit of the expression. He doesn’t say anything.

“You’re tied down,” Mary continues. Maybe the spirit doesn’t give two fucks about what she’s saying, but it helps her to voice things. “And once I figure out what you are, I’m going to kill you.”

“I am dead many times over,” the man says in an almost dreamy voice. A swell of burning meat, faint this time, drifts across Mary’s face. “Best work fast,” the man continues. “You have an appointment.”

Mary’s lips tighten and purse. She exercises what the incantation’s description promises she can do, and makes a fist with her bloodied left hand. She yanks an invisible rope to the right. The man grunts when he topples over. Mary keeps pulling, and the man starts to drag. He twists into himself and makes a soundless choking noise.

Mary stops when the man starts to get vague at his edges.

“No smoking away,” she tells him. “You’re my dog.”

The man stares at her from his convoluted position on the basement floor, his chest heaving.

***

“Don’t mess with blood ties and blood bonds and blood oaths,” Samuel Campbell had once warned a 16-year-old Mary. “They’re damn powerful and go bad too often.”

Mary smiles suddenly at the scuffed kitchen tabletop. One demon deal and now an unknown, powerful spirit bound to her blood. Daddy would be proud.

She can feel the spirit: a slight tug at her pulse that throws it off its usual rhythm. She knows that it brews in the basement, in the closet with the Christmas decorations, and that it hasn’t moved since she ordered it there. Dragged it there. It writhed and screamed when she yanked it across the basement floor by the equivalent of a hank of hair. She didn’t need to do that, really, she could have just spoken a word and it would have been compelled. But John had bled from his eyes and nose, the baby hadn’t moved for too many hours that night, five people lay dead, and Mary doesn’t have any mercy left for the thing that had pulled the rug out from under her and sent her tumbling back into hunting.

A hot surge in her arteries, gone within a heartbeat. The spirit tugging at the bindings, probably. It will have to spend long years breaking free. Blood holds power, and Mary had thrust enough fury into the incantation that she thinks the binding is now gilded with it.

The clock chimes the hour, and Mary drains her mug of decaf. She gathers her purse from the countertop and goes to pick up Dean from preschool.

* * *

 

**One Year**

Mary can already tell that Sammy is a different person entirely from his brother. Dean had been a baby prone to sudden outbursts of giggles and babbling: the kind of thing that strangers at the grocery store loved.

Sam is a watcher. He’s staid, preferring to stare down the strangers than to wave sloppily at them.

He’s doing it now, baby blue eyes wide and unflinching as he analyzes the woman behind them in the checkout line. She grins at Sam and makes the small wave that most people like to give infants, like there’s something writ in human DNA for that exact gesture.

“He’s gorgeous,” the woman tells Mary. “How old?”

“He’ll be six months in about a week,” Mary tells her.

Sam’s attention finally wanders away from the woman and he goes back to gumming contemplatively at his fingers.

Mary pays for her groceries then helps to bag the rest of the items because she still needs to get home and finish Dean’s Halloween costume. His class’ costume party is tomorrow, and the kid has his heart set on being Batman.

“Sammy’s gonna be Robin!” Dean had added then spent the evening campaigning for the right to bring his brother to class with him “so we can _match_.”

“Sammy’s still a little squishy and pukey,” John had told Dean. “We’ll do it next year, okay?”

Dean had slumped in the couch, but eventually acknowledged that Sam’s inability to walk might put a damper on things.

“I can’t believe you called your son squishy and pukey,” Mary had half scolded, half teased John later that night when the boys had been put away and they were preparing for bed. She stood in the bathroom wiping away that day’s makeup.

“Hey, we’ve all been there,” John protested from the bed. “You know how it is. You were born a few months ago, things are still pretty confusing, you’ve still got a lot of cartilage.”

“You’re a riot,” Mary clicked off the bathroom’s light and slipped into bed beside John. “You should do stand up.”

“Glad I’d have your support, babe,” John leaned forward. Mary huffed and then met him, nipping at his lower lip. John placed a hand on her arm and deepened the kiss, slipping into her mouth as easy as anything.

Mary still found herself searching for clues in these kisses, in their lovemaking. Some trace of bitterness, some old scar tissue that she might taste on the inside of John’s mouth.

John had come home a week after Mary had called him at the garage. He’d looked haggard and close to crying, half peppering Dean’s head with kisses and half staring at Mary like he was terrified of losing her if he looked away. Mary had eventually managed to extract an ecstatic Dean and put him to bed while John showered. Then she’d taken John by the hand and taken him to their bedroom.

There, sitting on the bed and their hands intertwined, Mary started talking.

She got as far as explaining that the mysterious deaths, people bleeding out of their eyes, had reminded her of her parents’ equally odd deaths. She was about to then explain a fictional one-night stand (not so much a lie; just not with a person but a way of life she thought she’d left behind) when John squeezed her hand and Mary had fallen silent.

“Don’t explain,” he’d said in a thin voice. “You don’t need to.”

“But—“

“You were in a hard patch and I wasn’t there to help,” John had continued steadily, his eyes on the comforter between them. “Now, we’ve both done things we shouldn’t have done and at this point it’s better to clean the slate. We’re starting fresh.”

Mary had gazed at her husband and recognized, with a small jolt, that some scent clung to him that hadn’t registered with her at first. Now she recognized it as perfume, but not hers. Something alien. Someone alien.

John gazed at her, watching her figure it out. He’d known she would. Now he offered a treaty rather than a war, a way out for both of them. For their sake and the sake of the child sleeping down the hall and the sake of the life fluttering inside Mary.

For a moment, some part of Mary roared to life at the thought that John had had another woman.

 _And you’ve done nothing wrong_? A wry voice had scolded her. _You condemned your shared child and hid your past from him. You dove back into a world you had no business getting involved with again. You’re no innocent flower, Mary Winchester._

So Mary had heaved a sigh and leaned forward to capture John’s lips. A kiss to seal the deal.

“Would you like the eggs in a separate bag, ma’am?”

Mary blinks at the boy bagging her groceries.

“Please,” she says, and loads the bags into her cart. Sammy makes mewling sounds that sound vaguely concerned, like he’s found a problem in his small baby-world but hasn’t decided whether to bring his complaint to Mary yet.

“You can file all complaints with the secretary,” Mary tells him as she starts pushing the cart. “I’m swamped today with all my clients.”

Sam rocks his head and makes a spit bubble.

***

Mary does finish Dean’s costume by that evening and manages to feel some pride for the Batman logo; it almost looks professional.

Dean, predictably, insists on wearing it all evening; darting around the house, (purposefully) short cape flapping wildly as he forgets any rules about not jumping on the couches or tables.

“Dean you’re going to fall,” Mary scolds him, Sam perched on her hip and starting to get fussy.

“But Batman always—“

“Batman always is careful not to brain himself because he knows that going to the emergency room puts a big damper on crime fighting.” Mary goes to the barstool and hooks her free arm around Dean’s middle, hauling him off despite his wriggling. “Stitches are no fun, buster brown.”

“Erin Green got stitches,” Dean counters, allowing himself to be settled on Mary’s other hip. “He said they didn’t hurt at all.”

“Erin Green is a big fat liar,” Mary tells him. “I’ve gotten stitches too and they do hurt.”

Dean leans back and studies his mother, like he’s trying to process that sentence.

“How?” he demands.

Which time? The time Mary got knocked over by a vengeful ghost and cracked her head on a doorjamb? When a werewolf, with one swipe, split her stomach open and for several breathless seconds Mary expected her guts to slop out? When a poltergeist threw a fucking desk at her and nailed her on the cheek but miraculously nowhere else?

“I fell when I was a little girl,” Mary tells Dean. “Because I was monkeying around on the playground and wasn’t being careful.”

Dean bites at his lower lip then, seemingly in acknowledgment, slumps forward and lays his head on Mary’s shoulder. Sammy babbles and drools a little.

“Sammy’s a messy baby,” Dean observes, reaching across Mary to offer his finger to his brother. Sammy waves a hand at it and then finally gets a hold of it, brings it to his mouth, and starts gumming.

“Eeewww,” Dean proclaims, but looks delighted.

Mary sinks into the sensation of her two children on either side of her, the house still smelling like the lasagna she made earlier, the living room that is a disaster area of black fabric and threads.

Something tugs at her veins.

“Okay,” Mary lets Dean slide down to the floor. “Batman needs to head to sleep.”

“Can I wear this to bed?” Dean asks.

“What do you think?” Mary asks.

“Yes.”

Mary cocks her head.

Dean heaves a sigh and starts wriggling out of the costume.

***

Mary flicks on the basement lights that night and for a moment stands there, staring down the worn wooden steps. The concrete floor is cracked and water-stained. Dean is still scared to come down here. Mary isn’t inclined to convince him otherwise.

Still, she’d like to put down carpet one day, when they have the money. It would make a good play area for the kids.

Mary starts making her way down the steps and the tugging at her blood grows. She can taste the resentment. She ignores it and instead goes to a far corner of the basement, behind the boxes of old clothes and miscellaneous junk. She pulls out several bottles of ingredients and, as has become her monthly habit, starts arranging them in a pentagram shape. Paula had been the one to suggest that she refresh the bond in tandem with the cycle of the moon, just to be safe.

“If you can’t figure out how to kill the thing, I guess this is the best option,” she’d said when Mary had spoken to her several weeks ago, after the latest failed attempt to destroy the spirit.

“Yeah but you just know that something’s going to happen,” Mary had sighed. “One day, something’s going to happen.”

“Yeah,” Paula had acknowledged heavily.

Mary finishes creating the pentagram and stands, poising her knife over her forearm. She looks up; she can almost see the spirit. A patch of slightly darker shadow that is more corporeal than smoke but not human yet. The spirit has been taking its human shape less and less often the past few months. It might be realizing that looking human won’t make Mary any more lenient with it. Or it’s losing the juice to make the transition. Mary’s hoping for the latter. At this point, her best bet might be wearing the spirit down to a harmless wisp.

The blood dribbles into the pentagram and Mary whispers the incantation that has been burned into her memory. The words slip out like live, wriggling things. When she finishes, she can feel the surge of renewed connection. The spirit is tired and angry, so not much change there.

Mary starts cleaning up and can feel the spirit watching her. After she dumps the blood-matted herbs and powders in a bin she’s stashed down here, she hears a small shuffle.

“It is close.”

Mary looks up to find…a man but not a man. A man made of vague wisps and smoke. His face is featureless, like the spirit didn’t have the patience to reconstruct it.

Mary stands and tosses the dustpan into the corner.

“Ten years ago,” the spirit intones in a faint voice. “You are just waiting now. Will the taxman come tonight? Tomorrow? In a week? In a month? Maybe you are one of the blessed and it will not come at all. Mother Mary, full of Grace.”

“I’m no virgin,” Mary tells it.

She’d been shaken the first time the spirit parroted her thoughts to her like this. She hadn’t anticipated that a blood bond would give the spirit avenues to exploit. But as far as she can tell, the spirit is only catching glimpses of her surface thoughts and cobbling the rest together, just as she catches flashes of its rage and boredom. Nothing has come of it yet, but just to be sure, she hasn’t looked up the method for breaking the blood bond. She’s trying not to be stupider about this than she’s already been.

The spirit starts to become more and more smoky, the scent of burnt meat surging and then falling back almost petulantly.

“You stay here,” Mary tells it. “If anyone comes down, you hide and don't touch them.” She feels the ripple of power in her words and revels in it despite herself. She then turns and climbs the stairs again and leaves the spirit in the basement’s darkness.

***

The spirit had not been lying though. Mary is starting to hate the feeling of waiting, almost wishes that the demon would hurry up and get things over with. Other times she wonders whether the demon has already come and gone, and that thought is almost worse.

Sometimes, when her mind is too buzzing to sleep, Mary slips down the hall to Sammy’s bedroom and looks down at her second-born child. She’ll pick him up and shush at him when he wriggles and whines in his sleep. She’ll sit in the old rocking chair that her mother used to own, the one where Deanna nursed Mary and Mary nursed Dean and now Mary holds Sam for hours at a time and tries to tell him that she’s sorry.

Sometimes she fails at keeping the tears back, and they slip down her cheeks. She presses her nose to the soft down of Sammy’s head and inhales his baby scent. She is staggered by the nature of the love that pours through her when she does this. It’s the kind of fire-like love that would let her steal and murder with impunity if it meant her children being safe; she supposes it’s the kind of love that let the old, hard mothers protect soft babies against creatures, famine, and humans. It burns her from the inside out. It’s dangerous and it’s fierce and it shocks her that she was chosen to be its vessel.

Mother Mary, full of Grace, the spirit had told her.

Definitely not.

***

On November 2, 1983, Mary discovers that the fire is what lets her charge up steps and down a hall to confront a demon. No holy water, no weapons. They stay in the table in the hallway. Mary only knows anger beyond reckoning, fear like a whetting stone, love like a sword.

Mary roars into Sammy’s room and she never comes out.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 

> _Holy Mary_
> 
> _Mother of God_
> 
> _Pray for us sinners_
> 
> _Now and at the hour of our death_
> 
> _Amen_

 

 

hey

                                                                        jude

                                                       don’t

         be

                                                                                                            afraid…

……

…

..

.

 

s

                                                       a  

                                                            m

 

 

 

heisjustababyhedidn’tdeservethisheisjustababy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

jude

 

 

 

 

                                                            s

                                                                                                       ammy boy

oh Danny Boy

the pipes the pipes are calling

from glen to glen

and down the mountain side

 

the summer’s gone

and all the roses falling

                                                       it’s you it’s you

                                                                                                must go

                                                                                                and

                                                                                                I

                                                                                                m

u

                                                       s

                                                                                                t

 

 

 

it starts with a D

and it starts with a J

 

names

 

since when did names become so important

 

Jean and Dohn

Sean and Sohn

 

 

words are slipperyslipperytoungetiedthings

 

…

..

.

 

 

bide. 

_Don’t worry, Mother Mary._

_Death is always disconcerting._

_You’ll find your feet again._

 

There’s something burning and you must have left the stove on. You get up from the couch to turn it off but surprise now there is no couch and no kitchen no house and no home just fire and burning meat and the meat is your meat burning burning burning above the little child so meek and mild round yon virgin ---

                                                                                                                                    I’m no virgin

 

 

John is a warm glory against her back, a strong arm around her waist

He

looked

so

confused

and

terrified

when

he

found

you

bleeding

and

ashen

on

that

spackled

ceiling

 

 

 

“Mary Campbell”

“Mary Winchester”

“If you’ll come with me.”

“Your time here is done.”

“Mary you must come with me.”

 

 

Mary say no.

Mary runs.

Mary runs far, far away from the creature in the suit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

jude

be not afraid

for I bring tidings of great joy

 

 

no still not a virgin

 

 

holy fire though

Mary never meant to let the         fire inside of her spill        out through that gash in her belly

Like a

                                                                        c-section

it consumed   the house

 

 

 

and

Mary can’t help but feel guilty for it.

                                                                                                           

 

 

“Mom!”

                                                            “Dad!”

“I did it!”

                                                                                                I” killed !it”

 

“Mom!”

“Mom!”

“Daddy?”

“Daddy?

“

 

 

                                                            “Mommy?”

“Where did mommy go?”

“Dad.”

“Dad Sammy is crying I                                   think he misses

Mommy”

 

 

 

“Daddy?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Daddy?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re seriously suggesting arson?”

“Well what do you want to think? I mean, the fire clearly originated here—“

“Faulty wiring.”

“Would be a great theory if there were any wiring here. But there just isn’t. Besides, you’ve seen the results. This fire left a residue of _sulfur_. What the hell kind of bad wiring makes that happen?”

“Weirder things happen. Listen, arson would require a perpetrator of some kind. The guy didn’t report seeing anyone.”

“He was shaken up and has two little kids with him. Dunno if he’s a reliable witness.

“Jesus, the poor little bastards.”

“Focus”

 

 

Mary can’t focus. Her kids are scared.

                                                                                                            How’s she supposed to focus?

 

 

 

 

 

The man is not a man.

Mary can see that.

Still he chooses to appear as a man when he walks toward her in long strides. He pauses right above Mary and gazes down at her.

 

                                                       (Daddy? Daddy, Sammy won’t eat)

 

Mary tilts her head up and studies him. He has olive skin and a hooked nose. His eyes are dark brown and he looks cloaked in smoke. Mary cannot smell the burning meat. Maybe becoming burning meat negates those things. Maybe it’s because she no longer has a body.

“You have as much of a body as you think you do,” the spirit says. His voice comes unevenly, like Mary’s right ear receives his voice before her left ear does. The echo effect is disconcerting.

“My body burned,” Mary says. She can say the phrase with no real gut reaction. She can tell that this is not what her living self would have deemed normal.

“Yes,” the man agrees. “Mine has burned too. You get used to it.”

They don’t exchange words for some time after that

                                                       (time does odd things these days)

and then Mary sees that she’s in the basement.

She is standing in the corner next to the weights she bought John once and he never used. She moves across the floor and ascends the steps because she has not remembered how to pass through walls yet.

The man sits in the kitchen, at the nicked table. The fire didn’t reach here; it looks all but livable. Mary sits across from the man and folds her arms on the table. She’s still wearing her nightgown

nightgown

nightgown

nightgown

nightgown

nightg

own

ngitgo

 

She blinks.

She looks across the table and finally understands the layers of death the spirit had been talking about.

“How many times?” she asks wonderingly.

“Three,” the man drags his finger across the tabletop. He brings up ash.

 

 

 

 

(Sammy you need to eat)

 

 

 

Men who Mary does not know pass through them in the blurs that the living have become. They come and go so fast like leaves caught in an eddy of wind. Mary cannot bother with their words; they’re too fast.

 

 

 

 

 

The sun crosses the sky and Mary and the spirit sit in their kitchen and watch the ladder of sunlight pouring through the windows shift angle. Mary does not mind sitting still for hours. She suspects she has spent more than hours sitting still since she died.

Time does odd things to her now

“The first time was a standard human death,” the sprit says. “I was a shepherd with a good flock and my family could give me honor when I died. They built me a shrine and they burned meats for me.”

Mary gazes at him. She can see that, beneath everything else. A man with wind-chapped lips and broad shoulders.

“My grandchildren had grandchildren,” the man tells her when the moon is high and bright. “They kept praying for me and soon they started praying _to_ me, because I was old in their minds and had power. I stopped being a ghost. I started to be a god for them. A household god. It became my job to watch over my bloodline. To shield them from the attention of undesirables. I petitioned to Demeter for their crops to grow well, to Hestia to keep the pantry stocked.”

Mary is in the master bedroom now. She does not remember going there but it hardly matters. She sits on the bed where she and John conceived Sam and waits.

_What are you waiting for?_

_What are you waiting for?_

_For you to go away_

“I stopped being a human,” the spirit tells Mary.

“A household god is not a human thing,” the spirit tells Mary.

“A household god must gather all the prayers of the bloodline’s living and bear them. That is the burden,” the spirit tells Mary.

 

 

                                                       “Mommy,” Dean is crying because he’s four years old, Sammy is asleep, and Daddy is gone from the motel room. “Mommy come back,” he keens. “Mommy please come back.”

                                                       “Mommy I miss you.”

                                                       “Mommy Sammy cries all the time”

                                                                        “Daddy is quiet and angry.”

                 “Mommy please come back.”

 

                                                      

“I have never heard of this,” Mary tells the spirit.

Something evil clings to the back of her throat like an open sore. She imagines that it’s burrowing deeper inside her.

 

 

Snow falls outside. Mary thinks that many months have passed since fire cooked her away.

 

many months

many months

manymonths

manymonthsmany

 

 

“God, Mary,”

John Winchester is in a church and he has his elbows on his thighs,

his hands clasped between his

He bows and exposes the back

of his neck to the cross

and the agony of the crucified Savior.

“Mary if you can hear me

if you can hear me at all

I’m so sorry.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.

I’m sorry that Dean and Sammy have to grow

up without

you”

Anger curls around him like a gauzy red silk

“I’m going to find the thing that did this

I’m going to kill that evil bastard

I swear to you Mary

I swear to you”

 

In the pew behind him Dean sits with his legs stuck

straight out and Sammy next to him.

Sammy babbles baby language

He says “friend-brother”

And

“big-not-mother”

in his wet burbles.

“Mother”

is not present and she will never be present again

so Sam’s baby brain discards those memories with impunity.

He cannot be blamed; he doesn’t know that in

a year

two years

22 years

he will ache for the memories he’s wiping away right now.

Instead he takes the warm good body beside him

The large awe-some body somewhere in the distance

And together they will replace “mother.”

He will learn Mary’s name

but it will be something else entirely

 

 

 

 

 

he will grow up under the shadow of Mary Winchester’s name

she will not be a person

she will be a creature of mystery

a monolith

an altar

 

“It’s not common, what happened to me,” the spirit acknowledges. They perch on the roof and watch buds come in on the grand old tree beside the house. Below them the building whirs with construction.

 

(the spirit looks more shifting and more smoke-like and darker than before. The evil, throat-sore thing looms somewhere inside it and curdles it)

 

 

“Then what happens?” Mary asks.

“Then time passes,” the spirit tells her. “The empire falls because that is what an empire is designed to do. My shrines are scattered. New saviors and messiahs are called in and worshipped. I die again when none in my bloodline call me a god anymore.”

“Hm.” Mary watches cars speed past. No black Chevys.

“I am a dead god, but a small dead house god can still stay to watch the bloodline. I do this, and I do my best. Times are hard, but that is that.”

Mary looks over to the spirit suddenly.

“Helena Donati,” she says, and the memories cut through her with clarity that is dizzying. “The old woman who owned the house before the couple. She was yours.”

“The last of my bloodline,” the spirit agrees. “Then she died and I died with her.”

Mary studies the spirit.

“Why kill all those people?”

“Why not? No purpose anymore. Why not kill?”

A sagging summer heat surrounds them, but Mary never noticed it coming in.

“What are you now?” she asks.

“A thing,” the spirit says. “A force. I’ll exist until I stop existing.”

 

 

 

Mary finds that death means she has trouble understanding time anymore, or why living people do the things they do. Living people are so stupid.

Take this man who comes into the house and surveys newly built walls and fresh carpets. He wants to make new people live there now and it’s a waste of his time. Mary tries to appear to tell him this, but she doesn’t think that he understands.

“You will get used to it,” the spirit tells her as they watch the man show a young couple through the house.

“You’ve been kind,” Mary says slowly, as if only now piecing together this fact. She turns to the spirit. “Why? I battered you.”

“I’ve not been kind,” the spirit tells her. “I’ve been using my time because otherwise I’ll be bored.”

It curdles. It’s a sore crusted with sulfur.

“I’ll get bored with you too and then we can grapple again.”

 

 

The first time the spirit attacks her, they battle for three days. Mary doesn’t think either of them win the upper hand. They part for several months to lick wounds and then fall into cool companionship again. Like a pair of cats.

 

 

 

 

The first time Mary coalesces into something a living being can see

she appears to them in a halo of fire

it is fitting

it terrifies them

Mary thinks that they ought to be terrified

they’d be idiots not to cringe at hell fire

 

 

Mary hears voices.

Haunted by the living

It’s a trio of voices,

John’s gravel

Dean’s song

Sam’s chirp

They weave through and above and around her

Mary gathers their pleas

their thanks

the memory of her

or the fabrication of the memory of her

(Mary discovers that she magically had the ability

to make the best cookies in the world.

Dean told this to a 4-year-old Sam because it made a better story.

Mary can respect her elder son’s decision.

Hard to say no to a good story.)

She watches John sacrifice their children on the altar.

Dean follows his father's example because he never knew better

he starts taking up the knife himself

Sam squirms when his father holds him down. He's no Isaac.

 

 

She bears all this

she understands

this is her job now.

 

 

(Her children are hunters and Mary hates herself for this

she’ll hate to watch her baby Sammy turn into something

                                                       something

something

                                                       something

s

o

m

e

t

h

i

n

g

 

 

something

 

 

 

 

 

“You can go, can’t you?” Mary asks the spirit one month. One year. Time is nonsense.

“No,” the spirit replies. “I’m thin and tattered. Safer here.”

Mary doesn’t like the spirit these days, generally speaking. It’s gotten truly nasty and brutish.

She wonders whether she can force it to leave somehow

and watch it sift apart.

Mary doesn’t like much these days.

The people living in her house are tolerable, slow and bumbling

but she still winces at the way the spirit hacks at them

and some living thread inside Mary convinces her to bat the spirit away

with a hard hand and a snarl

(maybe because the woman is a mother and the way she clutches her bouncing boy pricks at something inside Mary)

that reminds it she has prayers from her living bloodline coursing through her

and that in many ways

she is more powerful than it

Maybe that’s what makes it so sullen.

 

 

 

(One day the spirit

Twisted deformed angry

will attack her sons. That will be the day Mary burns through and finishes it off.

She’ll be glad that she manages as much before she takes her leave.

She was curdling anyway and she always hated to leave hunts unfinished.)

 

 

 

 

**Epilogue**

 

Pastor Jim considers it his priestly duty to teach Sam and Dean something of religion, even if the elder looks like his eyes are about to roll out of his head.

“Indulge an old man,” Jim tells Dean. Dean grunts.

“What’s this for?” Sam asks, holding up the rosary beads Jim got from a missionary trip.

“A rosary,” Jim sits beside Sam and takes the beads from him. “You say prayers with it.”

“What prayers?”

“Our Father. Apostles Creed. That kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Sam looks wide-eyed.

“Shall I teach you?”

Dean snorts.

“Here,” Jim ignores him and holds the rosary out to Sam. “One of the most common prayers is the Hail Mary.”

Sammy straightens and his eyes bug out.

 

He did not realize that his mother has a whole prayer devoted to her. Maybe she’ll be able to hear him better now.

                                                      

“Repeat after me,” Jim says.

 

Sam relishes the words, laps them up like they’re water.

 

 

***

 

Dean knows how to recite the Hail Mary too and sometimes he prays it. He always imagines Mother Mary with yellow hair and kind eyes. Singing Beatles songs.

 

 


End file.
